Basically like the title:
Can checksum comparison of 2 audio files indicate how different they are as well as whether they are simply different?
I need to choose one of the multiple checksum types (MD5, CRC32, SHA1) to test whether a scanned file is in fact the same as a previously scanned one. However it occurred to me that it might be feasible when comparing 2 checksums to know how similar the two files are which would be very useful too.
NO, checksums like MD5, SHA, ... are purely hashes. Even a change in one bit typically results in completely different checksum. There is simply no correlation between how the cheksum and input changed.